Friday, November 26, 2010

Jain Community celebrates launch of JAINpedia exhibitions and website

London 18th November 2010

The Institute of Jainology (“IoJ”) was delighted to receive His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London to view the JAINpedia exhibition and see the JAINpedia online digital resources.

The IoJ is an international organisation established in 1983. In 1990 the presentation of the ‘Jain Declaration on Nature’ to H R H Prince Philip, repositioned Jainism as the eight faith of the world and marked its entry to the World Wide Fund for Nature. The JAINpedia project created by the IoJ will be a first for Jain heritage as there is no other online public resource that has worked with the key holders of Jain artefacts in the UK or worldwide. The project now in its third year has exhibitions running at the Victoria and Albert Museum, the British Library, and still to come at the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

The event yesterday began with The Prince being greeted by Mr Paul Ruddock, Chairman of the V&A, and Mr Nemu Chandaria, Deputy Chairman of the IoJ and then introduced to the Directors of the IoJ and key staff at the V&A.

Mr Nemu Chandaria commented, “the Jain community is grateful to His Royal Highness for visiting the JAINpedia exhibition. His warmth and interest in the project and the Jain community has made this a very special day for us.”

The Prince was guided through the V&A exhibition by curator Nick Barnard and JAINpedia expert Prof. Nalini Balbir of the University of Paris. He spent several moments discussing Jain cosmology and 15th century manuscripts featuring the lives of the Jain teachers. His Royal Highness was then shown how the manuscripts are made available through the JAINpedia site.

Over 100 members of the Jain community were invited to meet His Royal Highness during the visit as well as stakeholders from the British Library, the Wellcome Trust and the Bodleian Library. The event concluded with speeches from Beth McKillop, Deputy Director of the V&A, Mehool Sanghrajka Director of the IoJ and the JAINpedia Project and finally by Wesley Kerr, Chairman of the Heritage Lottery Fund London Committee, who are supporting the JAINpedia project.

The event with The Prince of Wales on the 18th November at the Victoria and Albert Museum was photographed and videoed. Any media who wish to have a copy of the pictures and/or video need to contact Bansri Mehta on 020 8236 1001.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

BELGAUM: The Dakshin Bharat Jain Sabha will honour 19 achievers with different awards during its 91st quarterly session which is scheduled for November 27 and 28 at Borgaon in Chikkodi taluk of Karnataka.

The programme will be held in the presence of Charukeerti Bhattarak Pattacharya Swamiji of Shravanabelagola and Surendra Kumar of Dharmasthala. Ministers Umesh Katti, Laxman Savadi and Govind Karjol, ministers from Maharashtra, Hasan Mushrif and Satej Patil, MPs Suresh Angadi, Ramesh Jigajinagi and Ramesh Katti, MPs from Maharashtra, Sadashivrao Mandalik and Raju Shetty will be present at the award distribution function on November 28.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

BRUSSELS (EJP)---Brussels, the city which headquarters the EU bodies, has presented its bid to host Parliament of the World Religions in 2014, the largest interreligious gathering in the world held once every five years in a different city.

Nearly 8.000 people from around the world are expected to attend the one-week event whose objective is to promote the dialogue between the various religions, faiths and convictions.

The previous gathering in Melbourne, Australia, in 2009, had gathered representatives of the three monotheists religions, Christianity, Judaism and Islam, but also of Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Jainism, Animism and Baha’i. Brussels is competing with Guadalajara, Mexico, and Dallas in the United States. Members of the management board of the Chicago-based Parliament of the World Religions stayed in Brussels earlier this month to visit the city’s infrastructures and to appreciate their capacities. They also met representatives of religious groups and political authorities.

According to Peter De Wilde, head of Flanders’s tourism bureau, which works together with Brussels International (BITC) in the bidding process, this kind of event is very important for Belgium because of the economic fallouts.

"Brussels has much to bring to the world owing to the fact that it’s a town of junction and consensus", said Miguel Mesquita da Cunha, who chairs the Steering Committee Brussels 2014.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Washington: The Florida International University (FIU) has established the Bhagwan Mahavir Professorship of Jain Studies, the first of its kind in the western world, with a $600,000-donation from the Jain Education and Research Foundation.

Nathan Katz, FIU professor who specializes in the religions of India, was named the first Bhagwan Mahavir Professor of the endowed professorship in the Department of Religious Studies in the College of Arts & Sciences, the university announced on Wednesday.

"Dr Katz is a pioneer in the field of Indo-Judaic Studies and has been involved in the Jewish-Hindu dialogue for decades, making him a great candidate for this professorship" said Kenneth G. Furton, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

The endowment is part of a larger initiative by the Jain community to establish an academic education centre for Jain studies and research at FIU.

The proposed Bhagwan Mahavir Interdisciplinary Centre for Religious Pluralism would offer courses in Jainism, provide research opportunities and collaborate with universities throughout the world, the university said.

"The centre will link FIU with other universities globally in a number of projects, including study programmes in India, working with secondary schools and community organizations on religious pluralism, summer institutes, faculty and student exchanges, and lecture series, among other projects," Katz said.

The endeavor is being led by Dipak C. Jain, renowned scholar and chairman of the Jain Education and Research Foundation.

"FIU's faculty shows excellence in the dissemination and application of knowledge," said Samani Charitra Prajna, a faculty of the FIU in Department of Religious Studies.

"The diverse ethnic student body has freedom of thought and expression. This professorship will open new horizons and be a truly worlds ahead initiative for FIU."

Founded in 1965 and Miami's only public research university, the FIU has more than 38,000 students and has been classified by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as a "High Research Activity University". IANS

In recent few months, the Jainism Articles and Essays blog at www.jainology.blogspot.com has become very popular. So far more than 350 articles on various aspects of Jainology including archeology, history, sociology, biographies, literature, philosophy etc. have been published on this blog. Most of the articles on this blog are written by renowned scholars of Jainology and Indology.

The number of page views in last month (October 2010) was more than 20000. Most of the visitors to this blog come through search engines.The highest numbers of visitors are from India, United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia etc.By the way, the average number of countries from where visitors are coming is 105. The visitors include scholars and students of Jainology, history &indology; students of competitive examinations, writers, journalists and others.

We are looking for more articles for publishing on this blog. If wish to write for the blog, you are welcome. It is your chance to get a widespread readership. You can write on anything that is related to Jainolgy. The article must be scholarly.Just have a look at the blog at www.jainology.blogspot.comand you will get the idea about what we want.

A group of Jain scholars in the city have organised a national seminar on Jainism with the aim of reviving a 36-year-old book that seeks to unite all the sects of the religion. The seminar, which began on Thursday and will conclude on Friday, involves 15 academic presentations on Various Facets of Saman-Suttam, a book compiled from other Agamas (religious scriptures) by 300 Jain Acharyas and scholars from both the Digambar and Shvetambar sects. The book, commissioned by freedom fighter and human rights advocate Vinoba Bhave, was completed in 1974.

"Bhave's aim was to create a single text that explained the essence of Jain philosophy common to all sects," said Dr Geeta Mehta, a Jainology professor at KJ Somaiya Centre for Studies in Jainism, which has organised this seminar at its campus.

Written in the form of 756 Prakrit verses, the book has been translated in English, Hindi and Gujarati over the years. But it did not bring about a unity between sects as it had intended. "Each sect preferred to refer to its own texts rather than one which belongs to all," said Dayanand Bhargav, a Jaipur-based professor of Vedic religion.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

The Animals and Society Institute and Wesleyan Animal Studies invites applications for the fifth annual summer fellowship program for scholars pursuing research in Human-Animal Studies.

Beginning in the summer of 2011 and going forward, this interdisciplinary program will enable 6-8 fellows to pursue research in residence at Wesleyan University at the College of the Environment. Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut is a selective private, coeducational, non-sectarian school of liberal arts and sciences known for the excellence of its academic and co-curricular programs. Wesleyan’s College of the Environment was created in 2009 with a belief in the resilience of the human spirit and a desire to engage students and scholars in discussions about environmental issues and their social and political impact.

The fellowship will be hosted by Wesleyan faculty Lori Gruen and Kari Weil. Gruen is chair and associate professor of philosophy, associate professor of environmental studies, associate professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies at Wesleyan, and author of Ethics and Animals: An Introduction (Cambridge, Feb. 2011). Weil is a visiting professor of letters at Wesleyan, and author of Thinking Animals: An Introduction (Columbia, 2011).

The fellowship is designed to support recipients’ individual research through mentorship, guest lectures, and scholarly exchange among fellows and opportunities to contribute to the intellectual life of the host institution. All fellows must be in continuous residence for the duration of the program, May 23 – July 1, inclusive.

The fellowships are open to scholars from any discipline investigating a topic related to human-animal relationships. Selected topics from previous years’ programs include:

Analyzing one County’s Attempt to go “No Kill”

Animal Ethics in Cold War Literary Culture

Animal Experimentation and Animal Welfare in Twentieth Century Anglo-American Science

Animal Research in Theory and Practice

Animals and Colonialism

Cloning Extinct Species of Mammals

Ethics and Politics in Environmental Discourse in India

Gender Relations in Cattle Ranching

Genetically Engineered Pigs

Human Animal Relationships at the Duke Lemur Center

Inter-species Identity and Alterity in a Video Game

Legal Personhood, Animal Advocacy, and Human-Animal Relationships

Literary Representations of Dogs

Media Representations of the 2007 Pet Food Recall

Science and Policies Affecting Elephants in Captivity

The Animal Rights Movements in France and the United States

The Human-Animal Relationship for Veterinary Students

Victorian Quaker Women’s Contributions to Feminist-Animal Ethics

Xenotransplantation and Black Market Organs

Application deadline: January 15, 2011

Amount of Award

Scholars selected to participate in the fellowship program will be awarded a stipend of $3,000 to help cover travel costs, housing, living expenses, books, and other research expenses. The Wesleyan hosts will help coordinate housing for the fellows.

Eligibility

Applicants must (1) possess a Ph.D., J.D., M.S.W. or equivalent, or be a doctoral student at the dissertation stage; (2) have a commitment to advancing research in Human-Animal Studies; (3) be actively engaged, during the fellowship program, in a research project that culminates in a journal article, book, or other scholarly presentation, and (4) submit a follow-up report six months after the fellowship’s completion.

Cover sheet with the applicant’s name, mailing address to be used for future correspondence, telephone and fax numbers, e-mail address, present rank and institution name, date Ph.D. or J.D. or M.S.W. received or expected, citizenship status, title of project, history of fellowships and grants received during the past five years.

One paragraph abstract

Project proposal of up to three pages (single-spaced) that describes the project and indicates work completed on the project to date. As the description will be considered by a panel of scholars from a variety of disciplines, it should be written for non-specialists.

Curriculum vitae of up to three pages.

Two letters of recommendation (pdfs of original letters recommended)

Applicants are responsible for contacting referees and supplying them with a description of the project.

Selection Process

The selection committee includes members from a range of disciplines connected to Human-Animal Studies.

Applications are evaluated on the contribution that the completed project will make to Human-Animal Studies, the qualifications of the applicant to complete the research, and how well the applicant’s project complements the other projects. In addition, we favor projects that include policy and practice implications.

Applicants will be notified by e-mail and letter March 2011.

The fellowship program will be directed by Ken Shapiro, Executive Director of Animals and Society Institute, Margo DeMello, Program Director, Human Animal Studies Program, and Wesleyan professors Lori Gruen, and Kari Weil. Please address all correspondence to us at the following address:

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Mangalore, Nov 3: Noted scholar, Prof Hampa Nagarajaiah (Hampana), said that Jain litterateurs have, from time to time, embraced the language of the land they lived in, and always made coordinated efforts to provide new dimensions to the literature in the local language. He analyzed that because of their endeavours to gel with the local culture and language, both Jainism and Jain literature have remained sublime.

He was speaking after presiding over a three-day state level symposium on ‘Jainism, Literature and Culture’ that went under way at the old senate hall of Mangalore University at Mangala Gangotri near here on Tuesday November 2. The symposium is being held under the aegis of Kannada Study Centre of the university and Shrut Samvardhan Samsthan, Meerut.

“We always need to have affection towards Kannada. At the same time, we should remain responsive and receptive to changes, without being averse to them. The language should be open for all and available to everyone. This alone can ensure that newness and changes can be brought in the present literature. About 70 percent of words we use are in fact, Sanskrit words. As these words have become one with Kannada, it is impossible now to distinguish or separate them from our language. Likewise, many English words have become part of our language. We should accept these facts,” he said.

He opined that the contributions of Jain poets like Pampa, Ranna, Janna and Ponna towards enriching Kannada literature and giving a new dimension to it, can never be overlooked.

Charukeerti Bhattaraka Swamiji of Moodbidri Jain Mutt, who was present at the symposium, said that Jainism has always held values like non-violence and other values high. “Jainism has gained popularity and fame because of its strict policy of non-violence. Jain poets have contributed largely for the progress of Kannada and Telugu literature,” he opined.

University vice chancellor, Prof T C Shivashankara Murty, who inaugurated the programme, recalled the invaluable contributions made by Jain poets to Kannada literature. He hailed Jainism as a religion that is firmly seated on the principle of non-violence, not being aggressive, and not looking down upon anyone. He however, expressed his concern at the fact that the religion has of late, not retained the following it did in the past.

University registrar, Dr K Chinnappa Gowda, head of Kannada Study Centre, Prof Sabiha Bhoomi Gowda, and several others were present.